The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Show Runner

 

Kelly Macdonald and Irfan Khan; Puzzle

I am being ostracized by those with whom I go to films. It had been said that I hate films and there are no films that I like, which is a gross misrepresentation. However, there are a lot of bad films, and our little circle of "friends" often gets charmed into seeing a parcel of them based upon the positive reviews of on-line critics who seem to be easily impressed.

We saw Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman and even though I may have felt great team spirit against the rampant racism of the present age, I found the movie pretty pedestrian and often boring.  I have not been totally on board for Spike Lee for quite a while. While I consider Do The Right Thing to be a masterpiece, I sort of fell off the Spike Lee Joint wagon at the time of Malcolm X, which I did not like, even though I liked Denzel Washington immensely.

We saw Puzzle which was quite nice. 
The male leads were David Denman - whom we remember as Roy from the TV series The Office - and Irfan Khan - whom I insist upon considering the new PM of Pakistan ( who is actually Imran Khan ) and who seems to have the country under control and uses his ample extra time for appearing in films.
I certainly wish that Benazir Bhutto had had this type of situation, God rest her soul.

We saw "The Wife" which was an abomination...
Glenn Close is in "The Wife" and I was trying to think of a film she has been in that I could compare this to, and discovered that there is no film I liked that scintillated due to the acting abilities of Glenn Close. Not a one. She has been in films I liked, but I think I have always found her uninteresting.
She-who-must-be-obeyed observed that she was distracted during close-up scenes during which Close's angular features were suddenly offset by the intrusion of her "hammy" hands! It's true. I could not say something like that without being stoned by the combined frowns of the villagers, but She can compare Glenn Close's extremities to a pair of large jambons and no one says boo about it!

Well, that is a director-problem or an editor-problem. I certainly cannot fault Ms. Close for having hands like those of Brendan Gleeson

 The only way out is to not say anything about the films. My friends, of course, see through this and immediately make the conclusion that I did not like the film and am being my usual negative self.
In my defense, I use the following scale to rate films:

Writing/Story makes up 60% of the rating, followed by Editing with 10%, Acting with 10%, Camera Work with 5%, Lighting with 5%, Foley with 2 1/2 %, Gaffer with 2 1/2%, Continuity Girl and Best Boy with 2 1/2% between them, and Directing with 2 1/2%.

(The story for The Wife was indescribably dopey. Look it up somewhere where they give a rip if you truly wish to find the story-line.)

I used to include Producers in the rating system, but ever since Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel had featured a bakery called Mendl's which had distinctive pink boxes and had had an ad campaign that had sent some of these Mendl's boxes to real-life bakeries around the country... 

... And I had seen one such advertising box in The Home Bakery in Rochester, Michigan... Which is where I buy my buttercream filled long john dougnuts once a month... And where I had declared that I was a friend of the producer of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the producer being none other than the great Harvey Weinstein  (it is not a lie if it is for doughnuts!)  and I must have one of those Mendl boxes for my long johns.

They were impressed even if they weren't quite sure who Harvey Weinstein was, but were very sorry they could not let he boxes go. Then with the endless passage of time, and Harvey Weinstein's creds having gone south, they began to give me funny looks when I came on my monthly jaunts. So I wear a disguise. And it sounds a lot like a Wes Anderson movie, and that makes it more than tolerable; it makes it great!

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